Observations
At the market this week, I went to pick up tomatoes, among other items. While carefully picking through the tomatoes, I noticed people going for the more expensive (over $1/lb) on-the-vine tomatoes. I'm sure they were drawn by the same thing I would be: natural-looking vine-bound tomatoes with rich(ish) colour. One bunch I picked up featured one patchy-looking tomato that was part green/yellow. Yum... sometimes tomatoes don't look perfect, they in fact look terrible. I was tempted to tell a man that they're (the red ones on the vine) not really as good as they look, but I don't tell people how to shop.
Recent photo. You can see some of those were definitely picked green!
The ones I got seemed to have come down in price. When I photographed them a week or so ago, they were $1.19/lb and on Monday they were merely $0.99/lb. They're local grown "loose vine tomatoes." The local grown part was attractive. Some of them were very hard (not firm, hard), and some were soft. I chose ones that weren't too squishy and had good colour. They didn't seem to be bruised or anything. It was satisfying having tomatoes that I feared could actually get squashed! The next step, of course, is to try them and see if they taste as good as they feel.* On the other hand, home-grown tomatoes from my mother's front deck had a sort of springy firmness, like you could squish it if you squeezed hard enough. They're kind of like inflated balls. They're tender, but not too squishy. Sometimes they're fuzzy as well. That's the perfect tomato.
Ripe tomatoes have a very distinct colour, although I'm sure it varies between varieties, not that there is much selection in stores.
The appeal of local produce is very seductive. I often walk out with more produce than I intend simply because it's local. I went in thinking I wasn't going to get potatoes or apples just yet, but the potatoes were local grown, and the Granny Smith apples all looked different and were a good price. The peppers had gone up in price since the summer/end of summer, but they looked good overall AND they were local grown. Green peppers from California? Forget it. I support local farmers. It seems most of everything I buy there now is either grown locally or somewhere in BC. The Chinese mandarin oranges were, of course, an exception! (I find the best ones are smaller and slightly squishy, like the skin is loose.)
When you're given the choice, do support local growers! If organic produce is the same or similar price, try to get some of that too. For instance, Safeway romaine lettuce was 69c each. Organic romaine lettuce at my local market was also 69c each.
Author Marion Nestle pointed out that the benefits of organic produce go far beyond higher nutritional values, which itself has been debated. Because the growing methods do not rely on chemicals, it is healthier for the environment. The method "conserves natural resources, solves rather than creates environmetal problems, and reduces the pollution of air, water, soil... and food", Nestle quotes Joan Gussow in What to Eat (55). Nestle writes, "Pesticides are demonstrably harmful to farm-workers and to "non-target" wildlife, and they accumulate in soils for ages. ... If they really were all that benign, there would be no reason for the government to bother to regulate them, but it does" (45, What to Eat).
*The verdict? The tomatoes I bought, though not as impoverished as the Dole tomatoes, tasted horrible. They're fairly flavourless, and in fact kind of revolting, and left pinkish water in the plastic I had them wrapped in. Overall, they were very unpleasant. I still have 3 more, and will have to disguise them in a burrito. Blech. I told my friend that I'm sick of these bad tomatoes.
The evidence
The culprit!
Looks pretty good, right? Well, don't be fooled... And the phrase "beauty is only skin deep" definitely applies to non-organic tomatoes.
